


I embraced your eyes

by gogollescent



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: F/F, canon codependency...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A quiet moment on the cusp of sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I embraced your eyes

At the very limit of consciousness, Gamma sometimes experiences hallucinations too, although of course they do not resemble Zimmy’s. In the most frequent of these she can suddenly understand English, or else everyone is speaking Polish, or something a little between. Everyone is smiling; sentences part for her like the sea, and she walks across bare sand to the far shore of their meanings. But it is potentiality only. She knows that, if she could clear her head, their words would form with perfect fluency in her mind. It is a certain thing. She knows it like she knows that she is not alone. But all she does is, she watches the sounds arrange themselves, in high walls of dark water. She waits for the waves to crash over her.

When she first met Zimmy, the feeling of relief was— breathtaking. Relief filled her long lungs and force the warm air out. There were no real metaphors for how Zimmy spoke to her. Neither was there any chance to wait.

“Gamma,” says Zimmy now, “Gammagamma,” her hands all clammy over Gamma’s face. “Should I get Carver? Should I? Gamma,” her voice cracking with nervousness, all over Gamma’s mind. Czy mam. No. With telepathy comes abandonment. Polish could never coexist with the internal dark of Zimmy’s tongue.

Gamma turns her head, slowly, liquidly, her eyelashes skimming Zimmy’s slick palm. She turns her head until she can see from through Zimmy’s fingers. The world shivers in anticipation of collapse. She is thinking: nothing, at all, her whole head so quiet, for minutes now, for long salt flats of unvariegated hush. “Hmmmm,” she says, opening her whole mouth. Huunh, really. Whuuh. Zimmy kisses her, darting, guilty. Zimmy would never feel guilt over kissing a lonely girl immobilized by sleep. The shadows must be encroaching.

Sometimes Gamma would like to be bitter about that, that perjury of shame, but it seems to her that Zimmy answers to a judge so old and pale that the demands of human kindness are like husks beside his edicts. What point is there in hating someone who has been pursued since their first thought by meaningless pain? What possible difference could reasonable punishment make against a backdrop of screams? What is there to do but care for them as long as they will stand it. She presses her forehead to Zimmy’s forehead and drags her mouth on Zimmy’s upper lip: feeling the fit of their faces, the cartilage and warmth.

“I’ll get her,” Zimmy mutters. They are not going anywhere. There are books somewhere at Gamma’s back, but they are written in unreadable ink, and these days Gamma prefers the translated pitch of Zimmy’s eyes. As a girl in Poland she befriended children like Antimony, beautiful and contemplative and able to brush their hair; but when she reaches to brush her fingers through the hissing gunk around Zimmy’s clumped eyelashes Zimmy allows her access docilely. Zimmy, tangled and cruel, is so still that she makes communion of trespass, and though Gamma never asked for the kind of power that cannot be refused, still she finds it more than ever sweet.


End file.
